1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to a memory card connector and, more particularly, to a mini memory card connector, which has a slot in the open side of the housing for receiving any of a variety of mini memory cards such as XD card, MS card, SD card, or MMC card.
2. Description of the Related Art
Flash memory brings convenience to information industries for storage of data. For single, independent, or temporary data storage, flash memory eliminates the necessity of installing a big capacity of main memory. By means of the use of a single piece of flash memory, the storage and file management of particular data become easy.
Memory cards for use in consumer electronic products such as digital cameras, digital video cameras, MP3 players, PDAs, etc., include MMC cards (Multi-Media Cards), SD cards (Secure Digital Cards), SM cards (Smart Media Cards), CF cards (Compact Flash cards Type I and Type), and XD cards developed by Olympus and Fuji. The difference between a SD card and a MMC card is the number of pins. These two cards use a same slot in a read write apparatus. The storage capacity of an XD card can be expanded to several BGB, meeting user""s requirement for image processing. However, it is regrettable that conventional read write apparatus cannot read an XD card.
Commercially available read write apparatus commonly have only one slot for the loading of a particular model of memory card, or one of a few models of memory cards. For reading a different model of memory card, the user may have to change the read write apparatus. In order to eliminate this problem, read write apparatus capable of reading different memory cards are developed. However, these multipurpose read write apparatus have at least two slots in the front open side for receiving different memory cards. These dual-slot read write apparatus are commonly bulky. Further, these dual-slot read write apparatus commonly have a complicated structure.
The present invention has been accomplished under the circumstances in view. According to one aspect of the present invention, the mini memory card connector has an insertion slot and three sets of terminals respectively suspended in the insertion slot at different locations for the connection of one of a set of mini memory cards including XD card, SD/MMC card, and MS card.
According to another aspect of the present invention, a metal shield is provided for fastening to the housing to prevent a magnetic leakage and for contacting grounding mounting plates at the bottom side of the housing.
According to still another aspect of the present invention, the terminals each have a respective solder end extended out of the bottom side of the housing for soldering to a printed circuit board through surface mounting technique.
According to still another aspect of the present invention, a deck is provided for fastening to the housing, having a set of terminals for the contact of a CD or SM card.